By Charles Rogers

Time To Revitalize Famous Canarsie Historical Society

Last Saturday, October 20th, marked the 19th anniversary of the Canarsie Historical Society.

Way back in 1982, Ben DuBose, Elsie Oberg and Jean Gladwish Martenz all native Canarsiens who held this wonderful community dear to their hearts got together and decided to go formal, establishing a charter and garnering a nice group of about 19 dedicated people for their cause.

They made plans to coordinate their activities with city and borough agencies, made contact with our local education officials and, yes, also coordinated with professional archaeologists from around the city, with an eye on doing some "digs" here and finding artifacts to substantiate what they had already known: there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from the history of this very community, which, after all, dates back to 1600s and the Canarsee Indians.

Oberg and DuBose and the others gathered together those special artifacts theyd gotten through the years, including some relics of the Canarsees theyd dug up from behind Grace Church and photos theyd collected and held their first meeting with about 17 other interested local history buffs.

Among those advocates was John Denton, the man who had chronicled our past for decades in his articles in the Canarsie Courier entitled "Little Old Canarsie." His fertile mind was ripe and ready for picking and the new C.H.S. members were eager to hear every word he had to say.

Eventually, Mr. Denton became somewhat of an icon to the group and they took his columns to heart by the word!

One of Dentons "pupils," so to speak (to this day, he calls Denton his mentor) was Ira Kluger, the current president. When Denton passed away in 1985 at the age of 85 Kluger and Elsie Oberg, who were co-presidents of the CHS, retained much of Dentons columns and photos, loaning them to the Courier for duplication whenever we wanted. It was, after all, tailor-made for us, since this newspaper had been around only a few years less than Denton himself and since such a large proportion of the Canarsie community was made up of so-called "old-timers" who remembered the Canarsie of old. To this day, we still run repeats of his column, combining it with as many photos as possible (theyre both wearing thin and we could use more photos from our readers loan em to us and youll get em back. Honest!).

Within the past few years, the Canarsie Historical Society lost a few of its original members. DuBose went to Florida and Elsie Oberg passed away, followed within just a few months by her husband Ray. Now Mr. Kluger, who still calls himself "co-president," has sole possession of the title. There are very few regular members now, leaving Kluger to take care of what sparse affairs there are to handle.

"Id love to get the Society active again," he says.

Thanks to Ira Kluger and his dwindling crew of followers, the CHS still exists. He recently coordinated a special event involving the Courier to be announced in the near future which could spark a little more interest and, perhaps, bring out a few new members.

If youre interested in joining the Society, give me a call at the Courier office.